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Topic: Wikileaks (Read 6129 times)

None of that makes Obama and Assange allies. Quite the opposite. Obama is finding that rebuilding the credibility of government generally is difficult; shoring up the credibility behind government secrecy is even harder. Assange isn't making his job easier. The massive cable leak, says Clinton, "puts people's lives in danger, threatens national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems." The leak has also led the U.S. to tighten, not loosen, its security protocols. After consulting with the White House in the run-up to the WikiLeaks dump, State temporarily cut the link between its NCD database and SIPRNet. CentCom has reimposed its restrictions on using removable media, is newly requiring that a second person approve the download of classified information to an unsecure device and is installing software designed to detect suspicious handling of secrets.

Whether all that will work is an open question. "The world is moving irreversibly in the direction of openness, and those who learn to operate with fewer secrets will ultimately have the advantage over those who futilely cling to a past in which millions of secrets can be protected," says a former intelligence-community official. From the perspective of the U.S. government, which has just seen the unauthorized release of 11,000 secret documents, it may be hard to imagine what that world would look like. But at least one senior government official seems comfortable with where things are headed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates — no stranger to real secrets, since he served as CIA chief and Deputy National Security Adviser under President George H. W. Bush — shrugged off the seriousness of the cable dump Nov. 30. Said Gates: "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."

Not everybody is that nonchalant, which is why the President's real goal is to find a balance between keeping secret what should be secret, making transparent what should be transparent and doing it all in such a way as to augment the effective conduct of government. Potter Stewart had a go at defining such a balance in his Pentagon papers opinion in 1971. "The hallmark of a truly effective internal security system," the Justice said, "would be the maximum possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be preserved only when credibility is truly maintained." Wise words, from the heart of the American establishment. Words that Assange admiringly cites on the WikiLeaks website.

The argument of The Right in favour of surveillance cameras on street corners is that if you have nothing to hide, why would you be worried? It seems those in political power don't consider this applies to themselves. Wikileaks is a surveillance camera catching them selling crystal-meth to twelve-year-olds.

Would it be a good thing to start a poll on this? It seems to be a potential punch-up issue, so perhaps it would be deferential to our benevolent despots to float the issue before going ahead.

I have to come down on the side of freedom of information. In theory all of these things are done to protect us and yet we know nothing about it . I cannot help but feel that if the general population of the world had access to all the information from all sides they would release that we are all fraking idiots and go for a pint

As it stands a few people decide what is best for the whole based on variable that only they comprehend.

In my mind the next stage of democracy is complete transparency and if people like Julian Asange and his Wikileaks have to force a few hands to move us in that general direction then so be it.

I know this is naive etc but the day I loose my naivete is the day I give up all together. We have to dream of a perfect world if we want to make it real!

The British House of Lords, by definition one of the most elitist government arms in the world, released a report condemning the amount of public surveillence in the U.K. The august wigwearers claimed that privacy is crucial to individual freedom, the means by which one can live one's life without submitting to the artificial standards of others. In other words, everyone's got something to hide, and rightly so.

I don't see this argument for governments or corporations. On them, IMO, falls the onus to prove why they shouldn't tell us all. I have little power; they have tons.

Wikileaks is the greatest thing to happen to the world since the fall of the Soviet Union. The attempt by the Powers That Be to put us back in the dark, hopefully (to them) for keeps, speaks for itself.

People got embarassed? Good.

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And there is no liar like the indignant man... -Nietszche

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. -William James

I need to slow down on my skim reading. I blame IELTS tests.Here am I happily skimming a post. (Oh! Is this an ON TOPIC area? It's all so complicated). Anyway, I skim from CONdemning to freeDOM and I just assume this thread is about, well, not 'demningfree'.

So to get back to the subject: Wikileaks has been memorably marvellous in certain respects (the Afghan helicopter murders, for example), but less spectacular in its diplomatic stuff: A told B behind C's back that D was a twat and was also having an affair with B's sister who was known to A's Iraqi friend's brother who is the Minister.... blah blah.

And Assange is, without any shadow of a doubt, an obnoxious cunt (is that allowed here?)

And Assange is, without any shadow of a doubt, an obnoxious cunt (is that allowed here?)

Yes, I suppose you could see it that way. But then, obnoxious cunts are the ones who tell the emperor he has no clothes. They are especially obnoxious to the "Uriah Heep's" who think that they are in power. And thank God.

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"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.